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Turkey Plagued by Illicit Antiquities Trade

2009-09-29T12:19:00Z

An interesting piece this Sunday on the problem of looting of sites in Turkey and the smuggling of objects from war-torn nations like Afghanistan and Iraq through Turkey:

According to the “Cultural and Natural Assets Smuggling Report” prepared by the Culture and Tourism Ministry based on figures provided by the Anti-smuggling and Organized Crime Bureau (KOM) of the police department, Turkey sees higher statistics related to the smuggling of historical artifacts every year. In 2003 security authorities seized 3,255 historical artifacts that smugglers were attempting to take abroad. With a steady rise over years, this figure rose to 17,936 in 2007. And another new high came in 2008, when authorities seized 42,073 historical artifacts and detained 4,077 suspects in 1,576 operations. Coins are the favorite of smugglers as they are relatively easy to take abroad without detection. The number of coins seized by security authorities rose from 20,461 in 2007 to 55,613 in 2008. . . .

The report also maintains that conflicts and wars tend to create a suitable atmosphere for the smuggling of historical artifacts, as seen in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the ongoing wars allow smugglers to operate freely. The majority of historical artifacts smuggled out of these countries are sent to Western countries via Turkey. This route of smuggling implies that these historical artifacts are purchased by collectors in rich Western countries. The US, the UK, Switzerland and Japan are the favorite destinations for these items. The report cites lack of sufficient security measures against theft in museums as the major reason for the high number of smuggling cases. Tourism is the most widely used venue for smuggling historical artifacts.Furthermore, Turkey lacks a sufficient and clear inventory of historical artifacts in the country, and Turkey does not have statistics about existing historical artifacts and about already smuggled items.

Ercan Yavuz, Turkey a magnet for smugglers of historical artifact [Today's Zaman, Sep. 27, 2009]

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

More Art Thefts in California

2009-09-29T23:59:00Z

Coming soon after the theft of the Warhol works in Brentwood, and the armed robbery in Belgium, there has been another major theft in California. In Pebble Beach 13 works by Rembrandt (pictured here), Van Gogh, Jackson Pollock and others were stolen. These new works may be worth as much as $27 million. The works were stolen from Angelo Benjamin Amadio; who has since offered a $1-million reward for the return of the objects.

Why all these thefts? Is it a product of the economic downturn? Or are thieves hoping to gain some of these lucrative rewards?

Big art theft reported in Pebble Beach [Monterey County Herald, Sep. 28, 2009]

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Egypt Snubs The Louvre Over 'Stolen' Artifacts

2009-10-07T14:57:00Z

Egypt's antiquities department severs ties with France's Louvre museum in one of the country's most aggressive attempts yet to reclaim relics from some of the world's leading collections. The ruling means that no archaeological expeditions connected to France's premier museum will be allowed to work in Egypt.

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Louvre seeks to defuse Egypt row

2009-10-07T13:13:46Z

France's Louvre Museum says it is open to the idea of returning ancient fresco fragments which sparked a row with Egypt.

Pakistani Artists Find a Contemporary Voice

2009-09-29T06:12:30Z

The works in “Hanging Fire,” the first large-scale American survey of contemporary Pakistani art, at Asia Society in New York, offer a taste of the country’s increasingly vibrant art scene.

Art Review | 'Hanging Fire': Activist Energy With a Light Touch

2009-10-02T05:07:57Z

A closely edited group show of Pakistani artists at the Asia Society combines works of paranoia with exercises in issue-driven whimsy.

Architecture Review: Architects Reimagine the Barnes Collection

2009-10-07T22:18:09Z

Almost every detail of the designs for the new Barnes Foundation seems to ache from the strain of trying to preserve the spirit of the original building in a very different context.

New evidence uncovered in Warhol Foundation lawsuit

2009-09-21T16:43:53Z

The federal lawsuit in which a private collector is suing the Andy Warhol Foundation and its ...

Museum to Address Role of Hijackers

2009-09-12T06:11:39Z

Telling the truth about what happened on Sept. 11 includes showing the faces of the men who killed so many, officials say.

Uncovering a Small Town (and Some Tall Tales)

2009-09-19T05:18:29Z

An odd excavation site that recently opened to the public on Governors Island purports to offer artifacts, not of the Mesoamerican but of the midcentury variety.

Books of The Times: How Brandeis, Revered or Hated, Became a Giant of the Supreme Court

2009-09-21T08:04:02Z

Melvin I. Urofsky’s long, stately and satisfying biography, “Louis D. Brandeis: A Life,” gives a full account of every aspect of the Supreme Court justice’s incredibly varied career.

Netherlands Returns Iraqi Objects

2009-08-05T21:50:00Z

The BBC reports on the transfer of ownership of 69 objects from the Netherlands to Iraq which had been illegally removed from that country after the 2003 invasion.

The objects were taken from Dutch art dealers and will likely be displayed in the Dutch National Museum for Antiquities until they can be returned to Iraq.

Ronald Plasterk, the Dutch minister for education, culture and science, said the world should "cherish and honour" Iraq's history as the cradle of civilisation.
"These objects lose a lot of their value if they are stolen from their site," he said.
Mr Plasterk said the items were surrendered by Dutch art dealers once police informed them they had been stolen.

Questions or Comments? Email me at derek.fincham@gmail.com

Fractional Gift News

2009-08-12T00:07:00Z

The Wall Street Journal reports that "reacting to museums' complaints of sharp declines in art donations, a bill announced Friday by Sen. Charles Schumer ... could revive the practice of so-called fractional gifts."

Some brief background is probably in order. The Pension Protection Act of 2006 drastically changed the rules applicable to fractional gifts -- essentially bringing about an end to fractional giving. The most serious problem was what I referred to as the "mismatch problem": if the work appreciated in value between the time of the initial gift and a subsequent gift, the excess value of the subsequent gift would have been subject to gift or estate tax. In early 2008 technical corrections were enacted fixing the mismatch problem, but, as I noted at the time:

"[The technical corrections] do not, however, change the requirements that (1) the gift be completed within 10 years (or, if sooner, the collector's death) or (2) the value of any additional contributions be determined using the lesser of the value of the work at the time of the initial contribution or the time of the additional contribution (thus depriving donors of the benefit of any increase in the value of the work over time). So, while the corrections do bring fractional gifts back from the dead (as evidenced by the recent major gift to LACMA), there still remain some disincentives to fractional giving."

The new bill focuses on these two issues, and basically tracks the "agreement in principle" among members of the Senate Finance Committee that was described in a New York Times article in July of last year:

First, it was reported that "amendments hammered out by aides to Mr. Schumer and Mr. Grassley would lengthen [the 10-year donation period] to 20 years" -- and that's exactly what the new bill provides.

And second, it was said that Grassley appeared "willing to allow donors to claim deductions for subsequent donations that reflect increases in the value of the portion of the artwork they still own." That is also now reflected in the bill.

There's one other important change to note. Back in 2006, when this problem first surfaced, I mentioned a New York Times article which said that proponents of the change were concerned about "abuse" by collectors who "received upfront tax deductions for works that will not appear in museum collections for decades, if ever." Senator Grassely was quoted as saying: "It isn’t right for a donor to get a big tax break for supposedly donating a painting that hangs in his living room, not the museum, all year. A painting in a private living room doesn’t benefit the public." As I said then:

"Those problems, to the extent they are problems, could have been solved with the following two changes:

"1. By overruling the Winokur rule that the museum’s legal entitlement to possession for a portion of the year was sufficient to secure the deduction, even if it never took actual possession. This would eliminate Senator Grassley's concerns about a painting hanging in the collector's living room all year.

"2. By requiring that the collector transfer her remaining interest to the museum by some outside date .... This would deal with the concerns ... about works not appearing in the museum's collection 'for decades, if ever' (though the first change, overruling Winokur, would ensure that, from the beginning, the works would appear in the museum's collection for at least part of each year)."

As we've seen, the new bill does the second thing: it sets an outside date of 20 years for completion of the gift. But it also does the first: it overrules Winokur by providing that, for every five-year period, the work must be "in the physical possession" of the museum (and "used in a use which is related to a purpose or function constituting the basis for the donee organization's [tax] exemption") for a portion of the time "substantially" equivalent to its fractional interst (so, for example, a museum with a 20% interest in a painting must take physical possession of the painting for roughly one year out of the five). The WSJ story interprets this provision as requiring that the museum "exhibit the artwork in proportion to its ownership interest over every five-year period" (my emphasis), but it's not clear to me whether keeping a work in storage, or perhaps making it accessible to scholars, would satisfy that requirement. If not, then the donor may have to extract a promise from the museum, as a condition of the gift, to exhibit the work in compliance with this provision.

Very briefly, a few other points about the bill. First, like the Pension Protection Act, it provides that no deduction will be allowed unless all interests in the work were owned by the donor and the donee immediately before the contribution (although it contemplates the issuance of regulations covering "cases where all persons who hold an interest in the property make proportional contributions" of their interests).

Second, the initial fractional contribution must be at least 10%, and it must be pursuant to a "written binding contract" which requires (a) that a total of at least 20% be contributed within 11 years and (b) the rest be contributed within 20 years.

Finally, for works (as distinct from interests) worth more than $1 million, the donor has to attach to her tax return "a statement of value obtained from the Internal Revenue Service." There are also additional reporting requirements for museums.

You can read the bill, S. 1605, here.

Another Museum Embezzlement

2009-08-05T13:17:00Z

This time by a bookkeeper for the Tucson Museum of Art, to the tune of $975,000 over five-years. Previous museum-embezzlement stories here, here, here, and here.

"We imagine that the first hurdle the three plaintiffs will face is a challenge by Brandeis University to their standing"

2009-08-06T01:40:00Z

The Charity Governance Blog's Jack Siegel on the recently filed Rose lawsuit:

"Under general principles of charity law, the [plaintiffs] probably lack standing: Donors lack standing. ... The donors may ... be able to argue special interest standing, but the Massachusetts Attorney General is aware of and, according to the plaintiffs' own pleadings, has been involved in the dispute. Attorney general involvement can undercut a claim to special interest standing. The three plaintiffs will undoubtedly argue that their status as members of the Board of Overseers of the Rose Museum provides them with standing. As we understand the board’s legal status, it is advisory. That fact may undercut their claim. At this point, all we can say is that both sides have sufficient facts to keep the battle over standing going for several rounds of court decisions. In the end, we bet the three will lose on the standing issue, but there are cases where donors have prevailed. See, for example, Smithers v. St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, 281 A.D.2d 127 (N.Y. App. Div. 2001)."

My initial reaction to the complaint was similar.

Dealers decamping to vacation spots to score sales

2009-08-12T19:46:48Z

NEW YORK. Beaches, sea breezes and deep-pocketed collectors on holiday are luring some Manhattan ...

UK export licence office in controversial relocation

2009-08-12T19:46:29Z

LONDON. The chairman of the British Art Market Federation (BAMF), Anthony Browne, has condemned the ...

Criminal case against “extremist” Siberian artist ongoing

2009-08-12T19:46:22Z

St Petersburg. On 24 August, a court will hear artist Artem Loskutov’s lawyer’s plea to have the ...

African American art still needs support

2009-07-22T16:48:01Z

The US art world is abuzz over the White House campaign to bring a greater diversity to its art ...

Considering torture through art

2009-07-14T12:06:31Z

One of the leitmotifs of this blog has been that art can help us consider and understand the world around us, that yesterday's art can inform our thinking about today and that today's art can inform our thinking about tomorrow.

For some time now I've been fascinated by the belated national debate about how a lawless cabal at the top of the Bush administration turned us into a nation-that-tortured. Over the last few months the public debate about Bush-Cheney-era torture has been muted by a president who wants to pretend it didn't happen, a Republican party that figures that it got away with torture and murder so the past ought to be left in the past, Democratic congressional leadership that's more afraid to look soft-on-terror than it is eager to look patriotic and principled and a great swath of the American public that is uncomfortable with knowing that torture was committed by leaders that we elected, re-elected, and who acted in our name. Fortunately, a few brave, committed journalists, people such as Jane Mayer, Mark Danner, Philippe Sands, Andrew Sullivan, Amy Goodwin and Glenn Greenwald have worked to keep the spotlight on these issues. Just this past weekend, Scott Shane of the New York Times reported new details about vice president Dick Cheney's role in covering up CIA activities during the torture years.

In many ways, art is the perfect medium through which Americans might consider torture. Artists are independent contractors, unbound by official, blue-suited, Washingtonian notions of propriety. (Have you heard any elected Democrat refer to Cheney aide David Addington or Justice Department lawyer John Yoo as war criminals even though an overwhelming body of evidence indicates that they are?) Artists are trained to consider big ideas in ambitious ways. A half-century of American art has particularly informed artists in how the language of abstraction can be adapted to challenging topics and concepts. Perhaps because they embrace ambiguity rather than reject it, artists often excel at embracing emotionally and intellectually difficult subjects.

With the caveat that breaking news of some sort could knock us off the chase for a day or two, for the rest of this week MAN will be examining art and artists that I think can help us consider the crimes against humanity during the Bush administration. I'll start later today with the first of two parts on Bruce Nauman, whose work is on view now throughout Venice.

Related consideration of art and torture on MAN: George Grosz at the Hirshhorn, the Abu Ghraib photos part one, part two, the Hirshhorn acquires Martha Rosler's 'The Gray Drape.'

This week's posts: Bruce Nauman's Double Steel Cage Piece and Abu Zubaydeh. Nauman's 1981 'hanging chairs' sculptures become us. Part two.

Nauman in Venice: In addition to this website, the Philadelphia Museum of Art team responsible for the 2009 U.S. pavilion has contributed to a Nauman-in-Venice catalogue. You can buy it here at 35% off.